Show and Tell
by Elycat
Summary: “Of course, you really can’t blame me. I had a troubled childhood.” And so Ansem arouses Riku's curiosity, and so Riku delves into the twisted territory of Ansem's memory to discover a tale of good, evil, silverhaired six year olds, and... kindergarten.


_A/N - Don't ask me where this came from, seriously. XDXD But yeah, anyway. I suppose the memory-thing is kinda borrowed from Harry Potter and Pensieve-ness, but only vaguely._

_Disclaimer: (which I always forget!) I don't own anyone from Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy. Not even Riku, alas. Or Ansem... luckily for him. X3 Because this fic proves how cruel I would be to him._

_Oh yeah, I guess there may be some little FFVII spoilers in there, too. About Sephiroth. And mebbe an allusion to something mild about Aerith, but it's REALLY mild spoilage because... I haven't even played FFVII. _

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_Riku absolutely _hated _having an argument inside his own head. It made him feel crazy. He wondered briefly if Ansem felt the same way. Then again, Ansem already was crazy. The man was probably used to such feelings…_

"_You're demented," Riku told him._

"_Ah, yes. I am, aren't I?" Ansem replied, sounding rather pleased. Riku sighed. "Of course, you really can't blame me. I had a troubled childhood."_

"_Oh, really? Did some freak invade your head and start arguing with you?" Riku's thought was dripping with sarcasm._

_Ansem shook his head – or rather, shook Riku's head. "You have no idea of what horrors I faced! Whereas you…" There was a pause as Ansem sifted through Riku's memories. "You had the time of your life, skipping around that island of yours with your two little friends, sparring and building rafts and I don't know what else."_

_There was a long silence as Ansem turned his attention outward to bark orders to several Heartless. Something occurred to Riku, and he decided to see for himself what Ansem's "troubled childhood" was like… Careful not to disturb Ansem, he poked cautiously at his head-mate's memories and slipped in himself… searching for his most traumatizing experience. Riku grinned inwardly. This would be fun._

Riku lost sight of Hollow Bastion as he entered Ansem's memories. The castle was replaced with… a kindergarten classroom? The boy blinked. Now this was rather odd.

"Now, children!" The teacher rapped the side of her desk for attention. "We are going to have show-and-tell. I see all of you brought your toys to show the class – very good! Who wants to go first?"

"Me! Me! Ooh, me!" A little silver-haired boy in the back row jumped up and down excitedly. The teacher beckoned him forward. After shooting a superior glance at the boy sitting next to him, who also had silver hair, the kid jumped out of his seat and would have probably dashed forward, if he hadn't first picked up a six-foot-long sword and proceeded to drag it to the front of the class. Everyone stared, especially the teacher. She blinked.

"Erm, Sephiroth, dear, maybe you should leave that…"

She trailed off as, panting, Sephiroth succeeded in dragging his sword up to the front of the class. He tried picking it up to wave it in the air and failed miserably. Finally giving it up, he put his hands on his hips and announced: "This is my new birthday present from my mommy!"

A brown-haired, braided girl in the front row giggled excitedly. "Oooh! It's so shiny, Sephy!" She shook the blond boy next to her. "Look, Cloud! Sephy's got something shiny!" Sullenly he glanced up, although his eyes did rather light up when he saw his classmate's incredibly _shiny_ weapon. Then, embarrassed at being caught showing interest in his rival's show-and-tell, he stubbornly stared down at his desk again, sneaking glances at the shiny sword when he thought nobody was watching.

Riku snickered.

Sephy continued to talk. "Well, my mommy got this sword for me! It's long, and pretty, but it isn't pretty as Mommy. Mommy's really, really pretty. And it's shiny. And stuff. And Daddy says that when I'm old enough I can take it and go kill people! I'm going to take over the world, Daddy says. Mommy's so proud."

The teacher stared. Cloud and his brown-haired friend looked rather shocked, although the other silver-haired boy looked excited – in a slightly demented way. _I think it's time for Sephy's visit to the school counselor,_ the teacher thought – forgetting, as she always did, that his own father Dr. Hojo held that post, and always tried to encourage villainy in the children. Probably this was why the most demented children always went into the first grade even more demented than before.

Looking satisfied, Sephy dragged his sword back to his seat. He gave the boy next to him a look which plainly said, _Beat that!_

The teacher asked for another volunteer. The other silver-haired boy jumped up, but didn't beat a girl with purple eyes and shorter, darker hair than Cloud's friend. She winked at the other girl as she went up. "Hey Aerith, you should show off that awesome materia that your mommy gave you! It's shiny, too!" She whispered all this very quickly. Cloud looked as if he hadn't understood a word she said. Riku didn't blame him.

The teacher glanced at her with some relief. Compared to Sephy, she was one of the saner ones. "Now, Yuffie, what do you have there?"

"I'm not Yuffie!" she declared. "I'm the Great Ninja Yuffie! And I brought THESE!" She whipped out a large and very sharp star-shaped object and threw it at the wall where it stuck, quivering. Although from the way she looked disappointed, it was possible that she had aimed for Sephiroth's head. "See? I'm going to be a REAL ninja now!"

Yuffie (or rather, the Great Ninja Yuffie) probably would have talked more if the teacher hadn't cut her off. The poor woman was by now looking very nervous. "Yes, yes, that's very nice, Yuffie. Now please retrieve your… er…"

"Shuriken," Yuffie stated.

"Yes, take it down and return to your seat, please."

"Kay." Yuffie skipped off, wrenched the giant shuriken out of the wall, and sat down with it.

The teacher breathed an inward sigh of relief, and show-and-tell carried on. The silver-haired kid by Sephiroth never seemed to get an opportunity, so Cloud showed off _his_ giant sword (which, he proclaimed, would be used to kill evildoers – all while staring meaningfully at Sephiroth), Aerith showed off a shiny white orb which made Cloud drool on his desk a little bit, and a shy boy in the back called Squall showed off his brand-new puppy, which peed on the floor and sent the teacher into a fit. Finally, after the mess was mopped up, the teacher sighed and said, "Ansem, what about you?"

Looking triumphant, Sephy's silver-haired companion trooped up while carrying what looked like a piece of brown cloth. "I HAVE A CLOAK!" he shouted happily. Everyone else winced at the volume. "See? Isn't it cool?" Ansem put it on and twirled. "It's nice and pretty and stuff. I wanted to bring Shadowy – he's my pet Heartless! – but Mommy said he might try to eat people's hearts and stuff and she said I can't make him do that until I'm older."

The teacher blinked again and was about to say something, when Sephiroth announced loudly, "That's a stupid cloak. I think that's the stupidest cloak I've ever seen, Ansem. Don't you think it's stupid, Maleficent?"

The odd-looking, greenish-skinned girl sitting behind Ansem nodded and said it was.

"Yeah, we think it's stupid, Ansem!" Sephy grinned evilly.

Ansem sniffled. The teacher gave a reproving look at Sephy and Maleficent and said encouragingly, "Go on, Ansem. Tell us about your cloak." Privately, she reflected that while Ansem was one of the most demented kids in the class, he had this inferiority complex that was made even worse by Sephiroth's badgering him. The teacher predicted that Hojo would have to listen to another one of his angsty monologues shortly after class.

"Well, um…" Ansem sniffled again. "Well… I like it. Because it's cool and if I put it on, you don't know it's me." He proceeded to do so and walk around the classroom like a zombie. "And I get to freak people out with it! It's sooo fun!" He sidled up to someone and, making his voice deeper, told her, "The darkness shall consuuume you!"

The girl edged away hastily.

Ansem giggled again and took the cloak off. "That was lame," Sephy whispered loudly. Ignoring him, Ansem took a seat again. The teacher sighed, and hoped for the sake of humanity that Ansem never succeeded in his goal of taking over the world. What a nightmare _that _would be.

At recess, Sephy walked up to Ansem. "Your hair looks funny," he said.

"Well, yours does too! So nyah!" Ansem stuck his tongue out at the other boy.

"Your mommy is a psycho," Sephy said.

"And your mommy is… your mommy's an _alien!"_

Now this was the last straw for Sephiroth. He threw himself at Ansem, and a six-year-old fistfight ensued. Several kids gathered to watch with interest. "I'm rooting for Sephiroth," Maleficent said loudly.

"Stop it!" Aerith cried shrilly, and glanced at Cloud.

After a moment's consideration, Cloud shouted, "Go Ansem! Get him!" Aerith sighed and rolled her eyes. _Boys._

A few minutes later, the teacher marched up angrily and pulled them apart. Both of them were still shouting at each other. "School counselor! Now!" the beleaguered woman snapped. And she marched them off to Hojo's office.

"Sephy?" Kuja looked over his disheveled son, and glanced at Ansem. "Ansem, too? What have you boys been up to?"

"Sephy punched me," Ansem cried, and sat down at the back of the office to pout with both arms crossed.

"Daddy, he said Mommy was an alien! He's a _meanyhead!_" By now, Sephy was nearly in tears. But Hojo just looked thoughtful.

"He said that? About Jenova?" Sephy nodded vigorously. "But son, she _is_ an alien."

"Oh." There was a long pause. "Sorry, Daddy. I forgot."

"So are you going to apologize to Ansem now?"

"NO!" Sephiroth also retreated to the back and pouted next to Ansem. The two boys exchanged glances, glared for a minute, and turned away from each other. Hojo sighed. After a while, he glanced up.

"Sephiroth?" he said sternly.

"Ansem's a meanyhead!"

Ansem turned furiously. "_I am not!"_

"You are _so!"_

They were on the verge of lunging at each other again when Hojo separated them.

Riku, meanwhile, had started snickering during the boys' first argument at recess. By the time of the fight, he was laughing so hard he could hardly move. It was probably a good thing that nobody in Ansem's memory could see or hear him. Suddenly, being possessed by Ansem didn't seem like such a bad thing when you could tease him about something like this…

_There was a jerk, and Riku found himself looking at Hollow Bastion again, still quite unable to move his own body. Ansem was there, too._

"_What did you DO?" Ansem snarled._

"_Well, you looked at my memories. I was returning the favor." Although his actual expression didn't change, Riku still smirked inwardly, and Ansem knew it._

_Ansem was furious. "You… You'll pay for this, Riku!"_

_Riku gave a mock sob which became a laugh. "Really? Ansem, you meanyhead…"_

_Ansem sniffled._

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_Edit: Oh my goodness, I'm an idjit. X3 I went through that entire fanfic calling Sephy's dad by the wrong name... eheh. So that's fixed. This is what I get for trying to use FF7 characters when I've never even played the game..._

_Oh yes, and several lines - especially Sephy's - were either inspired or originally spoken by Rain. Kekeke. She ownz. ORGANIZATION II - HUMILIATE ANSEM AND SEPHY MANEUVER! -cough-  
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